Undefined Behaviour ch2 [draft 0.0.4]

Chapter::Encapsulation

How did I meet Violet?

Well.

Let me take you back to the monthly Glasgow Leatherdykes pub night. This would be about two years before she disappeared, at a kind of arcade-themed bar on Drury Street. More or less a regular bar at ground level—high ceiling, industrial sort of vibe with metal pillars and such. Big trans and Palestine flags on the wall, which is always appreciated.

On that night, all sorts of trans (mostly) girls (mostly) had found whatever articles of leather clothing and colourful symbolic handkerchiefs they might have about the house to gather here for bootblacking, arm wrestling, hooking up, and for a few of them, the pool tables next door. A novice in the ways of Glasgow, I was a little nervous. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t own anything made of leather, but I’d heard it was the place to be.

As it turned out, I’d heard right!

“So, it’s all moving data around at the end of the day. You have this big chunk of numbers in memory, like toothpaste, which you squeeze into the GPU to tell it where to put the triangles. There’s not really a 3D space.” I’m saying.

“Damn, I see!” says Violet. Both of us are nearly shouting, trying to cut through the enveloping blanket of conversation.

I’m fairly sure I’m a little drunk. (Working theory: might shield me from sensory overload. Result: unclear, but managing.) Violet, for her part, is sipping apple juice, occasionally taking a cold chip from a basket on the table.

(I would later learn she always went for apple juice. Violet was by no means absolutely sober, but her substances of choice were more in the area of LSD. She had no taste for alcohol, and seemed to find it a little embarassing.)

I hit the self-consciousness point and try to play it off with an awkward laugh. “Sorry, it’s, uh, special interest stuff. I can stop.”

“Bitch, I am genuinely interested. This is my genuinely interested face. Should I do more aizuchi or something?” She sticks her tongue out.

(I think that may be when I fell in love with her, but it took a little while to confirm.)

“Did any of what I said make sense? I can never tell whether I’m too deep in it.”

“Well, it’s basically Kant, right? Phenomena vs noumena. The pixels are like the phenomena and the numbers are like the thing-in-itself.” She sips her juice, her expression impish.

“I don’t know much about Kant but I think that sounds about right.” I giggle. “Thing-in-itself sounds like an innuendo, doesn’t it? Like ‘I’d put her thing in itself’…” What am I sayinnng??

“Isn’t that basically bottom surgery?” Thank fuck, she seems more amused than anything. “Penis eversion, in other words.”

“Yes, eversion! …hey, did you ever play that? You know the platformer where… you know. It goes all gooey and lovecrafty when you press a button.”

“I was picturing ‘how to turn a sphere inside out’, but yes, I played Eversion. Deep cut.”

“I gotta know about games…” I nod to myself. “Gotta know all the games. So I can make new games that people didn’t already make.”

“Quite an undertaking.”

“Yeah…” I turn to face her. (Dread to imagine what my expression must have been.) “It’s sooooo much work to make a game. You have no idea. Every little thing takes foreverrrrr.”

“You like it, though?”

I nod vigorously, eyes wide. “Would be a daft thing to do if I didn’t like it. Not like it pays.”

Violet gives an amused snort. “Bitch, you actually have a salary, right? Try living off tips and zines for a while.”

“Noooo.” I keep staring at her. “Nooo. Your zines are so good though! You know, I was reading your stuff before I even came to Glasgow.”

“Shit, you were?” This somehow breaks through Violet’s cynical air. She looks genuinely surprised.

“Yeah! When I heard you were up here it was like oh fuck wow I might actually meet her.”

“Damn, I’ve never had a fan.” Violet shakes her head, a wry smile. “Hope I’m living up to it.” I blush at that and she bursts out laughing. “What’s your name, anyway, graphics girl?”

“It’s, uh…” I found myself blushing more. “It’s Indigo. I kind of named myself after you, actually. I never thought it would be, like, a thing.” Aagh.

“Damn, holy shit. Well, I’m incredibly flattered.” Aaagh!

“But yeah, so.” I have no idea what to say. No, I am definitely not confident enough at that point to try and kiss her or anything. Please, let’s just go back to the firm ground of infodumping about computer graphics. “The numbers aren’t the thing-in-itself either, right? ‘Numbers’ are just an interpretation we put on bit patterns. And that’s just an interpretation of electrons in the silicon.”

“Turtles.” Violet puts her glass down so she can place one hand on another and make a wiggly thumb motion.

“Yeah, turtles all the way down, and we keep putting more turtles on top, as well…”

“So if anything,” Violet says, “the actual thing we’re interested in is the way the turtles fit together on each level? That’s the thing that makes them turtles, as opposed to, I dunno…”

“Likely dog. Behold, dog.”

Violet grinned. “Dog ahead. Try finger but hole.” On the other side of the table, a passing girl in a dog collar turns to wink at us and and we both lose it.

“But you have to know what the turtle is standing on…” I’m saying, after I’ve managed to recover my composure. “Because they’re leaky abstraction turtles.”

“What are you two on about? Turtles taking a leak?” The girl in the collar has apparently taken an interest, and settles on the other side of the table. She’s dressed very sharply, leather vest and curly hair swept to the side, tattoos collaging up her arms.

“This is Indigo. Computer graphics nerd.” Violet said. “Hey, Indigo, this is Magenta.”

“Just Maggie is fine! So, you’re new in Glasgow?” I can’t figure out her accent. Not Scottish, though.

“I’ve been here a few months.” I’m really having to raise my voice. “Up from Bath.”

She mimes bathing with a raised eyebrow.

“No,” I say. “It’s a city!”

“Oh? Where’s that, then?”

“England. The Southwest.”

Maggie tuts in mock-disapproval. Violet cracks up. “She’s from London.” she says. “Absolutely no foot to stand on here.”

“Yeah, well.” Maggie gives an exaggerated shrug. “I dunno. How’re you finding Scotland, then?”

“I like it a whole lot better! But, uh, honestly a whole lot of bad shit happened in Bath.” Hope that comes off in a suitably ‘don’t ask’ way. “So it’s a chance to start over. Knowing how the world works a bit more.” Both girls nod seriously.

“Yeah, that’s real. So what’s all this about pissing turtles, anyway?” She turns to grab a chair opposite and oh, yes, flagging yellow. Behind her, someone in a harness stops briefly to scratch her head and blow a kiss to Violet, then hurries off in pursuit of a slightly taller someone in a full latex dress. I try to remember their faces.

“Ehe, well.” I scratch my jaw. “I dunno if it’s as exciting as you think. We were talking about abstractions. So you know, the turtles on turtles metaphor.”

“Huh.” Maggie considers this for a moment. “So kinda like, abstract art and stuff?”

“I, um, hmm.” I glance at Violet. “Does that count?”

“Well. I think so, actually.” Violet looks back, all thoughtful. “Like, you’re talking about how in computers, you can abstract over the details of the lower levels, right?”

“Yeah!” I launch in, still struggling to make myself heard. “As long as it obeys the rules, the implementation could be electronics or microfluidics, ARM or x86, Linux, Windows…”

“Right.” she says. “So in abstract art, like visual art, you’re kind of taking the process –” Her words are swallowed by a cheer from the table behind us. Someone has won an arm wrestling match.

“Say that again?”

“I said, you’re taking the process of perception, and you’re hiding the details! Of, you know, what you’re perceiving!”

“Huh!” My brain works to parse out her words. “Yeah! I guess you’ve got shape, texture, line, colour… but not trying to relate those to some physical object that has that texture. Just the elements themselves.”

“And, you said the abstractions leak, right?”

“Uh, yeah!”

“So in abstract art, what would that be? The texture of the canvas and brushstrokes?”

“That’s not really specific to abstract art, though, is it? Like, like… you usually can tell if a picture was made with 3DCG, or digital painting, or watercolour. Whatever is in it.”

Maggie is looking between us, her expression somewhere between exasperation and fascination. “God, I fucking love trans women.”

Violet laughs loudly. “This one really brings it out in me!” I beamed.

“Why don’t we go upstairs where it’s a bit quieter!?” Maggie says.

I hit the bathrooms on the way. ‘A trans woman pissed on me here’ proclaims one person’s hand; ‘nice’ is written in another underneath. Another line, repeated across multiple walls, accuses an unfamiliar name of being a rapist. ‘Free Palestine!’ sits a few tiles away from ‘support trans rights or take jaggy shites’; on the opposite wall someone has declared the Bolivarian Republic of Strathclyde.

We’re up on the internal balcony with the arcade machines, overlooking the whole room as it surges with horny nerds (girl type). It is, to my relief, a bit easier to hear myself think.

“Well.” Maggie said. “OK, fine, you’ve got me. Abstract art. How does it ‘leak details’?” She looks at me expectantly.

“I guess the abstraction would have to fail in some way.” For a moment I’m lost thinking about how the heck this is where leatherdykes went. “Like, if we’re saying we’re abstracting over the relation between perception and objects, if the shapes in your abstract piece kinda look like something, then it’s leaking the fact that our visual system evolved to perceive objects?”

“Isn’t that what makes a lot of abstract art work, though? Like, it kinda looks like lots of different things, so you try to figure it out.” Maggie’s getting caught up in it too.

“Huh…” Violet says. “So the part that leaks is, in a way, the interesting part.”

“Now you’re talking.” Maggie says, and Violet cackles.

“But I’m not sure that’s right.” Me. “In computers, you build stuff out of the formal elements of the level below. The ‘abstractions’ of abstract art are abstracting over brushstrokes and stuff. To make shapes and lines and all that.”

Violet nods. “That’s fair. So we were barking up the wrong tree saying it abstracts over representative art?”

“Woof.” We both turn to look at Maggie. She makes a little doggie paw gesture.

“Well, yeah.” I keep going. “It’s abstract because it’s about the elements of a formal system. So I guess representative art is the next level up, where you use that formal system to do something else. But abstract art is about the formal system itself. The ‘programming language’. It’s like code golf, or a really nice algorithm.”

Maggie bursts out laughing. “You really are a STEM girlie. But yeah, OK, I think I get what you’re on about now.”

“So, what’s your thing?” Maggie says. Violet has gone back downstairs to pick us up some drinks.

“Like, what do I do? Or like, what kind of sex I’m into?”

“Whichever! Tell me about you!”

“Welllll. I’m a game dev, and 3D artist.” Seems like the safer option. “And kind of, um, a sakubuta.”

“A what?”

“Well, it’s, uh, –”

“It’s like a super weeb. Like level 100.” Abruptly, Violet is back behind me, placing two glasses on the table.

“…ok, so I mean the neutral way to say it is ‘sakuga fan’.” Stay the course, Indigo. “But ‘sakubuta’ is like, a derogatory term from Japanese imageboards that people use ironically. It’s kind of a corner of anime fandom, that’s all about the craft of animation, and, um, specific animators.”

“Like I said!” Violet pats me on the head, and disappears to get her apple juice. Maggie watches with amusement.

“She really likes you.” Maggie takes a sip of her drink with a satisfied expression. “Love to see it, honestly.”

“I hope I’m not weirding her out. I’ve been obsessed with her writing since forever. And now I’m here, banging on about, you know.” I fidget.

“Oh, no wonder then. She’s been dying for someone to actually dig into her stuff.”

“Huh.” I contemplate this for a moment. “I thought it would be really popular.”

“I mean, people think it’s cool. But she writes a lot. And I always get this feeling like, people aren’t quite picking up on what she’s trying to say.”

Sounds like my demoscene projects. “That’s a mood.”

Maggie shrugs. “Honestly, I think she sweats it too much. She writes great stuff. I really liked that one she did with the atoll.”

“Wait, which atoll one? There’s like three! The psychedelic one with the monastery, the really upsetting one with the selkies, the one that’s like a Shintaro Kago type of thing with all the body parts getting swapped, and, oh–”

I realise Maggie is laughing. “No doubt about it,” she says. “You are the real Violet fan.”

“Heh…” But which one does she mean? Agh.

“How about you?” I switch course, trying not to show too much more of my obsession. “What’s your, uh, thing?”

Maggie fiddles with the colourful handkerchiefs in her back pocket, and shrugs. “Well, I play music! And run some of the events round here.”

“Oh shit, what do you play?”

“Anything with a keyboard, pretty much. But I’ve got an old Moog analogue synth at home, I really like that.”

“Whoah, like Wendy Carlos used to use?”

Maggie leans forward, a horrific glint in her eye. I hear a groan behind me as Violet returns with her apple juice.

“You don’t know what you’ve done, Indigo… Maggie won’t shut up about Wendy Carlos.” She scoots in between us.

“Well, yeah, obviously I like Wendy Carlos.” Maggie grins like a shark. “But I like trans music in general, to be honest. Trannies just do it better. You just gotta respect your foremothers and all that.”

Violet sighs, but she sounds amused. “Here she goes.”

“Hold on.” I have to bite, constitutionally. “Trans music? Don’t we do almost anything? Like, I know there are really stereotypically trans genres like breakcore, hyperpop, noise… But that’s just kind of ‘recent electronic music’.”

“Sure.” Maggie says. “But those are really autistic genres, right? Textured.”

“Hmm.”

She waves it away. “It’s probably bullshit. But I like to think about it.”

“I think I get you.” I say. “I think of, you know, Lynn Conway, Sophie Wilson. They probably didn’t make computer architecture in an inherently trans way or whatever, but it makes me feel good to think we’ve always been like this…”

“Hey, you know what!” Violet says suddenly. She looks between us. “Rachel Pollack had a bit about oldschool trans hackers in one of her books. ‘Cross-gendered computer outlaws’ is how she put it, I think?” She fishes out her phone, encrusted with stickers, and starts fiddling.

“I’ve never been much good with computers.” Maggie pouts.

“Didn’t you literally just say you make music with modular synths or whatever?”

She laughs and raises her hands. “Hey, I’m fine with analogue shit! That’s literally just vibes!”

“I’ve got it.” Violet zooms in on an image on her phone, a passage from a novel. I read: I don’t know what it is about computers and gender people, maybe something to do with changing realities. A bit further down. Annie-O and her people considered what they did to be a sacred obligation, opening tunnels between the virtual world and the physical. On another line, Annie suggests the narrator’s inability to find her way in virtual worlds was the hallmark of a fixed gender.

“Wow, how did you find that?”

“Hey.” Maggie says. “She says I’m bad about Wendy Carlos, but you get her started on Rachel Pollack one day.”

“She was the fucking GOAT.” Violet says. “I wish I could have met her…”

“Come over here, Indigo.” I scoot my chair closer to Violet. She pats her lap. I open my mouth, close it, and scoot up there. On the other side of Violet, Maggie watches with an affectionate expression.

I can feel Violet’s breath on my neck and shoulder. (Trapezius, scapula. Thanks, brain.) And then she wraps her arms around me, keeping me stable. I am suddenly very warm.

“I don’t wanna take advantage of you being my fan and all that.” Violet says quietly, near my ear. “But you are super fucking cute, you know that right?”

I stammer some syllables along the lines of people have told me some nice things so I guess maybe.

“No, you have to say it.” Violet says. “No hedging. No citations. Tell me you are fucking cute and you know it.”

“OK,” I say. “Um. I am fucking cute and I know it.”

“Again, like you actually mean it.”

“Right.” I say. “Sure. I am fucking cute, and I know a lot about computer graphics and drawings of anime girls, so I know a lot about cuteness and I’m pretty sure I’m that.”

Maggie nearly spits out her drink.

“Good girl.” says Violet. “Are you doing anything tomorrow?”

I am not.

Ten years later, I’m sat on Violet’s lap again, looking at a database of patients.

The lap thing hadn’t entirely been planned, but Violet has the security clearance to look at the patient database. I probably shouldn’t be seeing it. But she wants to show me. And there is not a lot of room to see the screen without sitting in her lap. That had to be the only reason she asked me. It has been ten years, after all.

I spot Magenta’s name. Not, as I’d half expected, her deadname. Apparently the mysterious multinational conglomerate that’s funding this place is a stickler for respecting trans people. Probably something to do with Su-ni. What the hell is her deal? Like, either trans herself or some kind of ultra-chaser. But I can’t think about that.

“Maggie…”

After Violet had disappeared, Maggie had been hit about as hard as me. But for her, it was just the start of some very, very bad years. Surgical complications, a bad breakup with someone who’d been caring for her, and family shit, all piled on top of each other every time it seemed like she could catch a break. It had seemed like she was finally coming out of the tunnel, but then abruptly she disappeared too, leaving a note which said her body was unlikely to be found. I couldn’t bring myself to be mad at her for it.

“She came here?”

“Yes.” Violet murmurs. “Before they woke me up. I don’t know how they reached her.” She opens up a file: a scanned contract, in which Maggie had apparently agreed to undergo a medically induced coma and experimental neurosurgery. Legally nonsense, of course, that’s not something you’re allowed to consent to. But it doesn’t seem like the law matters very much down here.

“That’s really fucked up.” I don’t know what else to say. I had agreed to be part of this… whatever the hell this was. “She can’t revoke consent if she’s in a coma.”

“I know.” Violet said. “I do know that, Indigo! But… I mean, she would have… you know.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t. She was doing better.” I don’t really believe it, and Violet does not dignify it with a response. “So… this is supposed to be a way to save her?”

“People kill themselves,” Violet says, “for a whole lot of reasons. But one description that strikes a chord with me is that they just can’t imagine any sort of future anymore. So, this way, we can flush the context and put them into another world entirely. An afterlife, in a way.”

“If they can even wake her up from the coma. There’s got to be something less drastic.”

“The tech’s come on a long way.” Violet says. “Nearly always, they can.”

I make a doubtful noise, and shift awkwardly. “Fine. Who else? Of people I’d know.”

Violet scrolls through the database. I can’t let myself look at the screen. This isn’t for me to see.

“You knew Amaranth, right?” she says. “Same terms as Maggie. She’s already in the sim. And, oh, Helio! You two were super tight, right?”

Oh, Violet. I grimace… “Heliotrope and I… had a real falling out. About two months before it did it. It’s, um. It’s weighed on me ever since.”

“Well.” Violet says. “It fucked it up. It’s one of the ones who got here ‘naturally’, from the hospital.”

“Fucking hell, Violet.”

She folds her arms round me again. “Aren’t you glad?”

“I’m… this is just a lot to take in. And Yeong-Mi said it’s not guaranteed, right? I don’t want to get my hopes up and grieve them twice.”

“That’s not it, though, is it?” She can be so vexaciously perceptive at times like this.

“Right.” I swallow. “I guess I’m thinking, well, what do you say? Someone killed themselves, or close as. You play all these conversations in your head, things you wish you’d said or done together, ways you might have helped. You tell yourself that they’re at peace, somewhere. But it’s just, you know, a simulacrum. Your idea of them. Your brain’s way of making peace with the sudden hole in the world. What do you say when they come back?”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Violet said. “You’re outside and they’re inside. You don’t have to say a single thing, if you don’t want to.”

“I should, though, right?”

“Oh, Indigo. There is no ‘should’ about this. Do you think any ethics board would approve this shit? But you’re here, you’re not running to the cops.”

“You know I would never, right?” I say. My throat feels raw. “I don’t know that anything you’re doing here is right. But it would be even more wrong to destroy it.”

“Mm.” Violet says. “I thought you’d see it that way.”

She rests her chin on my shoulder, just like she used to, and I feel myself beginning to cry again.

“So how does this tech even work? Like, I know how to render to a screen or a VR headset. But we’re piping this right into their eyeballs? And what about touch and all that?”

It is, in some ways, like my very first tech meeting at any other job. I’m glad to be in it, though. If I can fill my brain up with programming, I won’t have to think any more about the big picture.

“Well, right now it won’t be so different from what you’re used to.”

The speaker had been introduced to me as Xander; an older trans guy, heavy-set with a bushy beard. I only know he’s trans because of the multiple trans flags and pronoun labels mixed in with the array of colourful badges down his suspenders. Otherwise, could be any of those old white German programmer guys I’d seen at every demoparty. He was, I’d been informed, the Biointerface Engineering Technical Lead. Hell of a title!

“Basically,” he continues, “we’ve set it up so you can use standard XR rendering APIs for visual stuff. Project each camera like usual, our stack will handle the mapping to optical nerve signals. As for touch and such, well, why don’t you explain, Heather?”

Heather is an alarmingly tall transfem enby, Black, xer hair cut in neat short locs, and big round glasses to complete the librarian look. Xe’s at least a head taller than me, and I’m already pretty tall. Probably the youngest person I’ve seen at the company, though it’s always hard to tell with trans people. I stumbled on the xe/xer pronouns once already, and I’ll make damn sure to practice later to make sure there wasn’t a second time.

Did this company hire any cis people?

“Right.” Heather says. “Yeah, so, touch, proprioception, that’s my department. We intercept the spinal nerves with electrodes where they spread out… that turned out to be the optimal place for substitution with the sort of electrodes we have! From the game engine side, you’re gonna have a bunch of animation bones for proprio, and a bunch of special textures which are kind of like, a force map over the skin. We’ve been kind of experimenting with different sensations there, training neural nets to improve the mapping of what gets through and so on. It has to be a bit custom for each person but we’ve figured out a standard API, I can walk you through it later!”

Violet elbowed me. “Pretty fucking cool, right?”

I’m frowning. “It’s crazy. Couldn’t you really hurt someone if it goes wrong? Like what happens if there’s a NaN in there?”

“We’ve mostly ironed that out.” Heather looks a little guilty. “You’re right, the first patients had a bad time. But now inputs get clamped really hard. If there’s any sort of feedback we squash it.”

“Well, that’s good you’ve solved it, I guess…” Let’s not imagine what happens when someone had every nerve input saturate. I’m sure the military would love it, though. Fucking hell. “God, what sort of hardware is this running on?”

“Basically every player gets their own rig, roughly a decent gaming PC.” Yeong-mi is across the table, ticking items off on her fingers. “Pretty high-end stuff, lots of VRAM to play with, but we’ve got a lot more pixels to push than a normal game. On top of that, there’s an authoritative server for each area. Latency is great at the moment, because everyone’s in the same building. But we still predict everything on-device because you really cannot afford any lag in this kind of situation.”

“Wow.” Given the cost of life support and surgery, the computers might not even be the expensive part of this operation. “Seems like you have this worked out pretty well already. What’s my role in it?”

“Well.” Xander says. “You’ve got to make our rendering stack good enough that people won’t go crazy–”

“What he means is, what worked in 2025,” Violet says, “or even now, is not good enough when you’re living inside it. It’s uncanny. All the hacks that you make in a game…”

“Fuck, it would be awful.”

“Right. We have to make it all work together. When you look at something up close, the detail needs to be there. When you touch a surface, it should feel right. Clothing. Water. All the hard stuff.”

“And after what happened to TSMC…” I look around the room. “We’re pretty much stuck on current hardware, right?”

“Yeah.” Yeong-mi grimaces. “It’s like you said a few years ago. Moore’s law isn’t coming down from heaven to save us anymore. We have to make do with what we’ve got.”

“I didn’t think that would apply to, well, something like this…”

“So what’s her deal, anyway?” I ask Violet. “Su-ni.”

We’re in the cafeteria, upstairs, in what is some clearly sort of regular office building. A sign lists the businesses in the building; upstairs is some sort of community film studio. Likely with no idea what was going on below their feet—better to imagine than the alternative, at least. It’s decently busy, and the overlapping conversations provide a wall against getting overheard. Even so, I’m speaking quietly, leaning across the table towards Violet.

“Well.” she says. “I never got the full story. But it’s like this. She’s an early transitioner. Her mum and dad are trillionaires or something. Like, I’m pretty sure they’re at the top of one of the chaebol. And she’s an only child, and her parents were weirdly cool about it all so when her egg cracked she basically got whatever she wanted.”

“Huh.” It takes a second to process. “So she is trans, then? I had sorta wondered given that like, you know, I haven’t seen one cis person since I went down there.”

Violet’s face twitches as she rolls her eyes. “Yeah. That’s by design. Like, you can ask her about this yourself, but she had a real personal crisis about getting to ride above it all like that. Especially when she came over here. So she’s made a point of hiring other trans people, paying for hormones and all that.”

“And also making her own personal sorta zoo or cult or whatever for us…”

“I mean, if you want to see it that way.” Violet shrugs. “I think she’s cool. I’m sure I’d be doing something insane like this if I had her sort of money.”

“There’s no way this is completely under the radar, though, right?” I can’t let go of it. “Like, that much money moving around, all these surgeons getting involved.”

“Well.” Violet says. “It is officially known as a research hospital. Just, a lot of patients are undocumented. The actual hospital part is across the river. I’m sure she’s got people doing real creative accounting to cover this all up.”

“Still, sounds like we’re on borrowed time. What do we do if the cops show up?”

“Honestly, Indigo? I don’t know.” She purses her lips. “Su-ni says there’s contingencies in place. But as far as I’m concerned, we just make it work as long as we can.”

“Indeed.” The voice came from behind me. I look back. Su-ni’s there, apparently happy to come up here in her absurd cosplay outfit. “Don’t worry, Ms. Indigo. I have security in hand.”

I scoot to the side to make space for her to sit down. She obliges, smoothing the fancy white skirt.

“Um, hi!” I say. “Sorry. I’m a bit of a worrier.”

“Don’t stop on my account.” An amused smile plays on her face. “It’s good to question everything, Ms. Indigo. You are absolutely right. This whole thing is shady, and a rich woman’s mad folly.”

“I didn’t say that…”

“But you were thinking it, weren’t you? Everyone does. The only proof I can offer is the results we’ve already achieved.”

Violet giggles. “I’m results.” I roll my eyes. Yeah, she hasn’t changed that much.

“Why go to such lengths, though?” Even as the new hire, I can’t resist pressing. “I mean, I’m glad you liked the game and everything, but…”

“Ms. Indigo, I did not simply like the game.” She looks at me severely. “Do not underestimate your accomplishment. TRISMEGISTUS was a revelation. It made clear that I was wasting my one, only life.”

“Surely you’ve played other deeply immersive RPGs? Games that moved you the same way? I mean, there’s Disco Elysium right there.”

“Oh, Disco Elysium was a profound game. And so are many others. But unlike your game, they did not perform a certain, specific magic.” She takes a deep breath. “Do not mistake my project here for pure benevolence, Ms. Indigo. I am, at heart, a selfish woman. I came to Scotland to save Ms. Violet, after her accident. And I did so because she could give me something I wanted—something I could not get anywhere else.”

And I stare at her, trying to make sense of these baffling pronouncements. And she watches me, severe and impassive as ever. I feel… angry?

“Ms. Su-ni.” I say. “I know you are my new boss and this is my first day, but I have to be frank.”

“Please.” The ghost of a smile.

“Are you actually nuts!? It’s just a game. Make-believe. I love Violet’s writing as much as anyone, but none of it is real.” I bite back the last, trying to keep my voice in check. Dropped to a near whisper. “You’ve tied everyone up in this whole thing, real people, to risk us all going to prison or worse. Done these experiments on actual, living people. Couldn’t you just have bought us out? Found another game to lose yourself in?”

“Indigo.” Violet says. “Think for a second. Do you think that chair you’re sitting on is real?”

I groaned. “Look, yeah, I get the philosophy and all…”

“Do you?” She reached across the table, and gripped my hand tightly. “That chair exists in your mind, Indigo. ‘Really’ it’s quarks, electrons, quantum fields, whatever. None of that knows it’s a chair. We say it’s a chair because we trust they will act as a chair.”

“Yes, it’s the phenomena! I understand about the fucking phenomena!” I see someone on another table turn their head, and bit my tongue. “Can we continue this somewhere else?”

We stand in the lift, me and Su-ni at one end, Violet’s wheelchair at the other, as it descends back to what I am increasingly thinking of as a sorcerer’s dungeon. Both of them are looking at me.

“People don’t like our game because it was a perfect simulation of another world.” I say into the silence. “They liked it because of your writing, Violet, and the art team’s designs, and all of that work we did… it told a story. They could fill in the rest themselves. You know, willing suspension of disbelief. Make-believe play. How are we going to have any of that here? If everyone’s just some random person plucked off the streets of Glasgow, they’re not going to roleplay Maude the Anchoress or Chairman Oberon or the Garrulous Unterbaron or whoever. This team doesn’t seem all that big. We’d never churn out content patches fast enough.”

“They are not.” Violet says. “We’ve had to pick some people to play the vital characters. But more importantly, the rules of the world are what they are. If we do our jobs right, what emerges from that will be something new and rich.”

“Then how is it TRISMEGISTUS!? Your writing made that game, Violet. If Su-ni wants a sequel so badly—”

“Ms. Indigo.” Su-ni places a hand on my arm. I flinch slightly. “I am grateful to hear your feelings and I hope you will continue to be just as forthright with me. However… I said I came to Scotland to save Ms. Violet. I did not say I simply wanted a sequel to TRISMEGISTUS.”

“Hey.” I look at her, still riding the wave of annoyance. “OK. Thanks for not firing me immediately, I guess. Why do you keep calling us ‘Ms.’?”

She laughs. “It’s an affectation, obviously. Roleplaying. You’re not an idiot, Indigo. I do it to remind you that I am your grandiose, megalomaniac boss, and not your buddy like Violet—Ms. Violet—here. So let’s not forget ourselves.”

“Indigo.” Violet says quietly. “The TRISMEGISTUS thing was my idea. I convinced her to do it.”

“Oh.”

The lift reached the basement with a soft ‘ping’.

“Why don’t you take the afternoon off?” Su-ni says. “You too, Violet. This has been an emotional day for both of you.”

Violet has a room on the premises. I suppose that makes sense. She is, supposedly, a patient at the research hospital. As hospital rooms go, it is more like a fancy hotel. Double bed, fresh sheets, beautiful view of the Clyde under a steely sky—though the bank of monitoring equipment, currently inactive, breaks the spell a little.

So I settle in an armchair as Violet shifts out of her chair onto the bed. Seems she’s not completely unable to walk, but it doesn’t look easy. I watch her unclip a blood pressure cuff, fold it round her arm with practiced motions, and press the button. A hiss; the cuff inflates. She rests, quiet against the headboard.

After a minute, she speaks. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.” Sounding a whole lot more exhausted than she had at lunch.

“Do you want me to leave?” I hold my hand out towards my bag.

“No. No, I just…” She looks over at the window. “I don’t get to leave. So I thought… I didn’t want to make you a prisoner, too.”

“They don’t let you go outside?”

“It’s more like… I can’t really go anywhere on my own. Sometimes I just… it’s kinda like epilepsy, a seizure. Or my arms just stop working. Or, you know, I switch out and I’m the other guy for a while and things get really confusing.”

“Fuck…”

Violet’s words keep flooding out, a broken dam. “They did it better for the later patients. At some point they’ll swap out my chips too. But, I think Su-ni wants them to iron out the procedure first. It definitely wasn’t her idea for them to operate on me so early. She was really mad about it, actually, that’s kind of where the situation with her family –”

“Hang on, hang on, slow down.” I love a good infodump, but this is a bit much. “Go back a minute, Violet. Did you say the operation made you plural?”

Violet shakes her head. “I’ve always been plural, silly.” She pauses. “I mean. Since I was a kid anyway.”

“Oh, fuck. You never told me…” Had I come across like I’d be prejudiced or something? Half my friends are systems, these days.

“I would’ve. But. Well, when we were together, I hadn’t been Char in ages.”

“Char? As in like, Char Aznable introject!?”

“Oh my fucking god, no.” Violet wheezes with laughter. “Fuck! That would be amazing. Nah, it’s short for Chartreuse.”

“Your alter is named Chartreuse? You’re pulling my leg.”

“No. I’m serious. You’re the graphics programmer, you figure it out.”

“Wait, is that like, the inverse of violet? Kind of a yellowish green?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s… wow, I don’t know what to say about that. Which one of you named yourself first? Or was it like a mutual thing?”

“Well. Originally he was like, my deadname, like, you know it right?” I nod. “But then I became Violet and he didn’t wanna be that anymore so he changed to be Chartreuse.”

“Huh.” I say. “Well, tell him I said hi, I guess.”

She nods. The clock on the wall keeps ticking. A minute or more.

“How’s he with the trans thing?” I say. Foot, straight to mouth.

“Pretty chill.” Violet shrugs. “I think he IDs as a femboy or something. He can probably explain it. Anyway, he’s cool with hormones and all that.”

“So when they woke you up…”

“Char fronted for ages. I mean, I have memories from that period, but it doesn’t feel like it was me, you know? It’s like I was in a deep sleep, having a weird dream about doing muscle rehabilitation exercises.”

“Huh. Sounds like he didn’t get the fun part…”

A wan smile. “Yeah, he’s kinda mad about it honestly.”

I reach out to take her hand. “I can’t imagine what it was like.”

“From what they tell me, you haven’t exactly been having the easiest time of it either, Indigo.”

“Heh, well.” My eyes fix on the white bedsheet. “I really have not. Should I ask about that ‘what they tell me’, Vivi? Have they been spying on me?”

“Nah, mostly they just asked Yeong-Mi a whole bunch of questions when they got her out of jail.”

“Huh. Didn’t think she’d be the type to blab.” Not that this is the cops, but still…

“She didn’t say a damn word until they brought me in to see her.”

“That’s something.” I manage to look back at her face, and she reaches over and lays her hand on mind. Take another breath. “So… getting the old gang back together?”

“Nah.” Violet said. “Half of them aren’t even in the country. And those that are, well, Su-ni’s got that policy…”

“Trans only? Seems like a recipe for disaster, honestly. And kind of a shame for them to be left out of this.”

“Welll…” Violet sucks in her cheeks. “She doesn’t just hand out the hormones and stuff out of kindness. That’s obvious, right? We’ve all got a big interest in keeping this place secret. I mean, me more than most.”

“Surely she can’t think that she’s the only source of hormones?”

“It’s not just that. The people they saved from killing themselves. The hugbox aspect of this place. Obviously I’m not saying she’d pull the plug on a patient if their friend ratted us out. But like, if they found out about this place, who knows what would happen? Nobody wants to risk that.”

I look at her, frown deepening. “Bound together in conspiracy. Like we’re already in another world…”

“Exactly.”

“Didn’t you write a story like that once?”

Violet shrugs. “Probably. You always had a better memory for them than I did.”

That strikes me as terribly sad.

“Come cuddle me.” she says.

I hesitate for a moment. “Are we still…”

“I don’t care what we are. I just want cuddles.”

Seems fair. I kick off my shoes and push myself over to the bed, wriggle into the covers beside her. Her head finds its way to my clavicle, and I massage her neck and shoulder, firmer and firmer, the way she used to like it. Evidently she still does! That happy murmur, capable of melting me just as well after ten years. If she’d been a cat, I am quite sure she would be purring.

“Magic hands…” she murmurs.

“Hm?”

“You’ve still got magic hands…”

The next morning, I wake up in bed with Violet. Where the hell else would I ever want to be?

We make our way downstairs. Yeong-mi and Heather are waiting as we enter the basement. The latter’s holding a VR headset, and what I’m fairly sure is a haptic feedback suit draped over one arm.

“Ready to go inside?”

“Yeah.” I say. “Let’s get to work.”

PaddingByte::Magenta

It’s some sort of forest. Quite pretty. And obviously not real. You raise your hands to your face, and you’re a little disappointed to see that they are still hands, not paws.

What is even the point of waking up in the afterlife and still being a human?

Your memories are pretty foggy. Hard to tell what’s a dream and what’s not. This does not feel like a dream, though. You scratch at your arm. The feeling is strangely muted, not real pain, but it’s definitely a solid, concrete feeling.

Someone is watching you from the edge of the clearing. You look closer. Two someones.

Their faces look stylised, not quite as you remember them, but you recognise them easily enough. Violet and Indigo.

Fancy that…

“How much do you remember?” It’s Indigo. In this world, she is even taller. Willowy. Her eyes are larger than they should be. Like one of the fairies in that damn game.

Oh, shit.

You’re starting to remember how you went out.

“So. I guess I’m still alive.” It’s hard to remember. All of your memories seem strangely distant, wrapped in some sort of dissociative haze. Drips of distant pain echoing through a cavern.

“Magenta. As agreed in October 2029, you have been maintained in a medically induced coma for seven years, and then you participated in an experimental neurosurgery. I can report the operation has been successful, and as a result, you are now inside an experimental virtual world.” Violet, this time. Unlike Indigo’s body, she is a sort of floating amorphous mass, constantly shifting between different shapes, the world beyond refracting through her body.

You vaguely recall these things. ‘Jellies.’ Inspired by some ancient webcomic.

Violet continues. “Right, that’s what the script requires me to say.” She glances over at Indigo. “In short, your nervous system has been rewired. Right now, you are in a virtual world based on TRISMEGISTUS. We’re trying to make it better than the outside one.”

Weird fucking dream. “Damn,” you say, “that’s crazy. Can I be a dog?”

There is a gap in your memory. That’s how it is with dreams. But now you’re a dog. Anthro dog.

You have some complaints, though. “I don’t think my paws are quite right. They’re too flexible.”

“Oh, I think we’re still using the finger softbody physics model, I’ll have that fixed in the next update.” Indigo is as earnest as she ever is, bless her.

“Sick.”

Canine locomotion takes some more iteration. Walking on digitigrade legs takes a little getting used to. But you practice running on all fours.

If this is a dream, it’s a weirdly long and detailed one. Violet comes to visit you occasionally. She asks you questions about dog people. “I’m going to have two different factions,” she’s saying. “They’ll be aligned with the fey. Some stayed with Oberon’s Seelie Court, and others joined Titania’s Unseelie Court in the rebellion. Does that sound good with you?”

“I don’t know.” you say. “I never really followed all the lore you made up. This rules, though.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’ll relay it to the others.”

You run into another dog person. They’re really struggling with the walking, so you get them to try some exercises you’d come up with. They introduce themselves as Brea, and you’re like, no way, Brea? Haven’t seen you in ages. Furmeet, right?

“Are we really in a virtual world like they said? Like a game?” Brea asks you.

The world has changed quite a bit since your awakening. At first, your paws would clip right through the grass. Now it folds down, and springs back up when you walk away. You can even feel it, or something like it.

It does seem kinda like a game.

“I guess, yeah. But mainly I’m just enjoying being a dog.”

You really want to hunt something, now you’re getting the hang of running. Unfortunately, the forest is rather lacking in animal life. And you can’t smell shit.

Indigo comes to visit. There’s someone with her. Incarnated as a homunculus made of lacquered reddish wood, trimmed everywhere with intricate carvings.

“This is Heather.” Indigo says. “How are you settling in?”

You tell her your desires.

“I told you we should have started on smells.” Heather says.

Indigo groans. “And I told you, that’s gonna take a whole complicated simulation. I wouldn’t know how to begin testing it.”

A gust of wind rustles the grass and trees around you. You can feel it, sort of. It doesn’t quite play through your fur, the way you think wind should. But you can feel which way it’s pushing, the coolness of the breeze.

“We’re simulating wind now, right?” Heather says. “I mean, not my area. But couldn’t you put smells on that?”

Indigo paces. “That’s just curl noise at the moment. Proper fluid sim is gonna take way more compute and there’s a bunch of issues we’ll have to figure out. But how does your smell API work again? Maybe we could just…”

Nerds.

You go for a run in the forest. No doubt they’ll figure it out.

The next day, there is an animal. A small, fluffy, round thing. Sorta like a cartoon sheep.

Pounce.

Blood particles spray in the air.

You can feel the force of it against your jaws, the softness of the creature’s fat and muscle pushing back. The weight of it.

Nice.

“This has been really amazing. I don’t know how it’s possible.”

“Thanks, Maggie. That really means a lot.” It’s Indigo come to visit you this time, her long faerie body curled up so she could sit on the roots of a tree. Her voice sounds strangely sad. You wonder what she smells like. Still not implemented.

You pad over and snuggle in next to her. She scratches behind your ears. At first it felt really strange to be touched there, but over time, you’ve gotten used to it. Brains are crazy.

But there is a question that’s been bugging you, now you’re pretty sure this is not, in fact, a dream.

“So…” you begin. Indigo shifts, tilting her wide-eyed face to look down at you. You don’t know how else to put it. “How do I log out?”

“Ah, well.”

Indigo’s face isn’t animated, but you can feel the anxiety in her body’s abrupt shift.

“Right now? …I’m afraid you can’t.”

FanWiki::MariLwyd

Mari Lwyd is an NPC spawn associated with the Unseelie Insurgents. It usually spawns in a Wassailing Squad, although lone Mari Lwyds may be seen in the Deepwoods. A special Mari Lwyd, called Ceffyl Dŵr’s Husband, can be found as a merchant in the Scurriers’ Market area.

Depending on the player’s faction reputation, Mari Lwyd may be friendly or hostile.

Appearance

Mari Lwyd appears as a horse skull with large eyes over its eye sockets, followed by a train of fabric. There are multiple variants decorated with different flowers and ribbons (see Gallery).

The Mari Lwyd NPC is inspired by a Welsh wassailing tradition.

Friendly Mari Lwyd

If the player is considered ‘respected’ by the relevant subfaction of the Unseelie Insurgents controlling the area, Mari Lwyd will greet the player with songs and offer a taste of the Wassailer’s Cauldron. This can impart a variety of either beneficial or detrimental effects. Usually, the player will receive two effects, but if the same effect is rolled both times, they will receive one effect with twice the strength. (See RNG Manipulation for ways to get specific effects from the Cauldron.)

Wassail of Seven-League Toes

Multiplies running speed by seven for the next 77 seconds. Be careful not to run into walls or you will take damage.

Wassail of the Looking-Glass

Reverses the player’s controls (movement and view) for 44 seconds. If this is rolled twice it cancels out.

Wassail of Unstillness

Applies a ‘motion amplification’ post-processing effect to the player’s view for 33 seconds, which makes the screen grey except for the trail of moving objects. This effect is disabled in VR mode.

Wassail of the Whale

The player can breathe underwater but drowns in air for the next 99 seconds. Usually this is fatal, but if a Mari Lwyd spawns near water, it is very useful for exploration. It is not clear why this is named after an air-breathing mammal.

Wassail of Foxes

Dogs will be hostile to the player. There is a +3% chance that the Wild Hunt will be active when entering an area. This effect lasts until the next rest.

Wassail of the Hearth

The player is immune to the effects of cold and gains a 20% hitpoint boost. However, the player is considered a medium heat source, so perishable food items in their inventory rot faster. This lasts until the next rest.

Wassail of Exchange

The player temporarily becomes a Mari Lwyd, and the Mari Lwyd takes on the player’s character model. While a Mari Lwyd, the player’s only actions are to sing, whinny, and to stop being a Mari Lwyd. If the player enters an indoor area while in Mari Lwyd form, they get the ‘pwnco’ achievement.

If the player has acquired a musical instrument such as the Barrow Carnyx, Homunculocordion or Catspaw Flute, playing a tune near the Mari Lwyd will ensure that one effect will be the Wassail of the Hearth. The other effect is still random.

Mari Lwyd dialogue

Many of the dialogues from Mari Lwyd are drawn from Welsh wassailing songs, but sometimes a Mari Lwyd will address the faerie civil war, generally in verse as well. These songs are tied to the overall state of the civil war. If Titania and Oberon have been killed, there is a special funeral song.

In 2030, during the pandemic, speedrunner Fandango held an ‘online wassail’ event in which fans of TRISMEGISTUS recorded their own versions of Mari Lwyd’s songs. The full, compiled song is included below.